There’s this game called Just Cause. It’s about blowing stuff up, driving vehicles and flying around. It’s the most perfect action game ever, in the way that the gameplay and the game engine really allow you to trip: it’s like a GTA game with the craziest gadgets. It’s great fun.
They just released the 4th iteration of that game and apparently, it’s a disaster. For some reasons, producers decided to add all that weird unlocking/challenges/grind fest for “engagement” and streaming I guess? It started with the previous game and they just went further into this, despite not really making people happy at all.
What’s so infuriating is that the core game is fantastic but you can’t appreciate it the way you want because they put some rigid obstacles in front of it, like terrible key mapping, awful menus and other super arbitrary designs. It’s just incomprehensible. How do you mess up UI that much in 2018, on the 4th version of your game? How?
Imagine an awesome TV show where they decided to flip the picture 90° to the left so that you have to watch in an awkward position. That’s how those production decisions feel like.
It reminds me of EA and Burn Out, another quite timeless game from 2001. The only thing people complained about was the annoying DJ talking all the time and the unskippable intro with Guns n Roses. They remastered the game this year. You would think that they would listen and simply take out two elements that are bothering players and that are absolutely not core to the experience, right? They left that shit in. They could at least give you a choice, a simple on/off toggle. No. There’s a mod to do it though.
What’s up with being actively deaf to reasonable requests from players who want to spend money and spread the word about your game? I don’t get it. Developers ask for feedback, listen and just do the opposite. It’s bizarre. We really have to do better because we’re looking like clowns with that stuff.